word for today

Exodus 20:17 NIV



2014-10-24

Written by Bob and Debby Gass

The Word from the Top (

In the last of the Ten Commandments, God told His people: 'You shall not covet your neighbour's house... [nor] your neighbour's wife, or his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbour.' Coveting means grasping and craving for things that don't belong to you. Haddon Robinson said, 'Covetousness is simply craving more of what you have enough of already'. It's why Paul writes, 'Godliness with contentment is great gain' (1 Timothy 6:6 NKJV). In his book of sermons, 'Feminine Faces', Dr. Clovis Chappell writes: 'When Pompeii was being excavated there was found a body that had been embalmed by the ashes of Vesuvius. It was that of a woman. Her feet were turned toward the city gate, but her face was turned backward toward something that lay just beyond her outstretched hands. The prize which those frozen fingers were reaching for was a bag of pearls. Maybe she herself had dropped them as she was fleeing for her life. Maybe she had found them where they had been dropped by another. But be that as it may, though death was hard at her heels and life was beckoning to her beyond the city gates, she could not shake off their spell. She turned to pick them up, and death was her reward. But it was not the eruption of Vesuvius that made her love pearls more than life. It only froze her in this attitude of greed.' There's nothing wrong with wanting more in life, as long as you're enjoying the things God has already given you, and you're sharing them with others.

Soul food: 1 Corinthians 12; 2 Kings 6:1-7:2; Jonah 1